Author's Notes: Okay everybody, mind the warnings on this one! I don't want anybody going in unprepared. There's Major Character Death (and minor character death too), and Disturbing Imagery.
This is a prompt fic response for AvengerAssembled (again) who asked for "Roger Tribbey's first hour as President." I'm not a big fan of "let's kill everybody" fic, but that's pretty much what you have to do to get your designated survivor in the big chair. Hope you enjoy.
Roger Tribbey didn't watch the State of the Union that night. It would always haunt him afterwards that he hadn't sat down to watch like a loyal member of the Bartlet Administration should have. But it had made sense at the time. He'd seen an advanced copy of the speech, and it seemed very good, and he didn't want to waste his hours in the White House sitting by a television. He'd been there before, of course, for Cabinet meetings and such, but never allowed to wander unsupervised through its halls and rooms. He gave himself a self-guided tour of the West Wing, monitored by Secret Service agents he expected were probably laughing at him, cruised through the Oval Office one more time, and then went further afield.
He avoided the press room, where a handful of journalists were watching the speech from the relative comfort of their desks rather than jamming into the press area at the Capitol, and headed down to the Mess, where a gaggle of senior assistants were gathered with wine coolers and Chinese food, while another gaggle of legislative liaison and junior deputy types hung out on the other side of the room with pizza and beer. There was a television at the front of the room playing the State of the Union, but nobody was paying a lot of attention.
From Roger's perspective, the assistants looked to be comforting one of their own, Leo McGarry's redheaded aide, who had probably had a very tough week with the announcement her boss had made about Sierra Tuscon. The junior deputies looked like they were trying to find a way to move in on the assistants, but weren't brave enough to try. Youth was wasted on the young, figured Roger as he sat down with the women to socialize. Most of them didn't know who he was, but Josh Lyman's blond assistant, Donna, recognized him and that was apparently enough to give him an in. Harmless flirting with a handful of very attractive women in the White House was a much better use of time than watching a speech that would be the topic of every news show for the next three days anyway.
He was talking about school lunches with Ginger, the other redheaded assistant, when a scream from the front of the room drew his attention. Cathy or Carol, one of the dark-haired assistants, was standing at the television set with her hands over her mouth, staring at the screen. The speech had stopped because the President was sprawled over his podium, red-faced and apparently gasping for air. Roger wondered if he was having a heart attack, until he saw the Vice President and the other dignitaries in the background were gasping and choking as well, some of them sliding out of their seats. There was commotion behind the camera, many choking noises, a short, gasping scream, the shuffling and scuffling of bodies in motion. Something jostled the camera and threw it out of alignment, sending its viewfinder skewing at a crazy angle across the crowd. It looked like a scene straight out of hell. The distinguished and dignified attendees, the most powerful people in the country, were panicking and falling in the aisles, tearing at their ties and collars as though that would give them more air, turning red and then blue as they collapsed. By now Roger could hear more screaming, but all of it in the Mess itself as the staffers watched helplessly. It didn't last long, thirty or forty-five seconds at the most before the feed was cut and the network's "Please Stand By" logo appeared, but it might as well have been a lifetime. Someone was vomiting, Roger thought maybe he should do that as well. The air in the room suddenly seemed very close.
He was still staring at the blank screen when the Secret Service burst into the room, at least a half-dozen of them, cutting through the confusion of the crowd to grab him by the arms and begin pulling him for the door. "Mr. Tribbey, please come with us!" He saw someone fall down, tried to reach out and help them up, but was all but lifted up off his own feet as the agents pulled him through the door and down a set of stairs he hadn't even noticed before. He had a vague impression of a long concrete tunnel and a steel door that had to be four inches thick, and then he was suddenly standing in a windowless conference room with a handful of military officers who were all shouting into telephones. This room had a whole bank of television, some of them showing static, others with standby messages or frantic newscasters. The pair on CBS were weeping openly, their voices muted but the emotion clear. BBC America was still showing Changing Rooms, Roger wondered inanely whether somebody would lose their job for that. Nobody seemed to be paying attention to him at all.
In a previous life, long before Washington and lobbyists and learning more than he'd ever wanted to know about agribusiness, Roger Tribbey had spent three years teaching middle school science back in Southern California. It was the only time he'd ever had to command a room, so he called on that now, dropping a binder onto the table to catch people's attention. "Hey!" he called when people finally looked up at him. "Who's in charge here?"
There was a moment's pause. "Um, you are, sir," someone finally ventured. "At least until further notice."
Roger's heart dropped to somewhere below his diaphragm. "All right," he went on, his voice rasping just a little, "who's second in command then?"
A young man in a suit passed his phone to a uniformed officer and stood up. "That's probably me for the moment, sir. I'm Calvin Traeger, Deputy National Security Advisor. Nancy McNally... she was up on the Hill." He swallowed hard.
"All right," Roger said, trying to push Nancy's face from his mind. He knew her, knew so many of those people from Cabinet meetings, from social events, most of them he even liked! But there was no time for any of that now. "Do we know anything about what just happened?"
"Some kind of gas attack, released from multiple points inside the structure," Calvin reported. "We're not sure what kind of gas it was, the effects don't exactly fit anything we've got a profile on. Whatever it was, it was very fast, and extremely deadly. Secret Service Agents in gas masks and protective clothing were in the structure within three minutes of symptoms first appearing, and found no survivors. They're having to be cautious about ventilating the building to avoid further casualties, but it looks right now like everyone who was in the Capitol Building is dead. They've confirmed the President, the Vice President, the Speaker and President Pro Tempore, and the other members of the Cabinet. You're it, sir."
A Secret Service agent broke in right about then. "Mr. Secretary, someone from Justice will be arriving momentarily to administer the oath of office to you. Do you have any family that we are unaware of?"
"No," Roger managed, through a mouth that had suddenly gone dry. "An ex-wife in San Diego, but that's it. Where the hell are we?" he asked suddenly. "I've never seen this place before, and I know it's not the situation room."
"This is the Presidential Emergency Operations Command Center, sir," the agent informed him. "This is the safest place in the building during a serious threat."
"All right, okay." He scrubbed his face, his mind wheeling. "I need someone to assemble all the ranking commanders," he told Calvin. "We're going to appoint new joint chiefs right away. Get me... um, the deputy attorney general, whoever that is." He racked his brain, trying to remember every piece of advice President Bartlet had given him, tried not to remember his last sight of that kind and accomplished man. Why was the only advice sticking in his head the part about the toilet handle in the Residence? "And find me somebody who knows what's going on here in the building who can talk me through it. Do we have any domestic policy advisors left?"
Calvin got on his phone, and the Secret Service agent started talking into his wrist thing, even as more people continued filing into the room. There were more outside, he could hear, and although there were hollow voices and choked voices, nobody was crying. It was just as well. Roger was pretty sure that if anybody else started reacting to the magnitude of this whole thing, he wouldn't be able to stop himself from collapsing. In less than five minutes, another Secret Service agent showed up, escorting two of the assistants he'd met earlier and a man wearing a polo shirt and khaki pants who looked almost as shocked as Roger felt. The assistants both looked like they'd been weeping copiously, but the redheaded one's voice was firm when she spoke. "Secretary Tribbey, I'm Margaret Hooper, the Senior Assistant to the Chief of Staff, and this is Donna Moss, the Senior Assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Strategic Planning. We'll be helping you with whatever you need as far as White House procedures and domestic policy until you name new staff and advisors."
Donna, who had recognized him just a half-hour ago, looked dazed and half-sick, but nodded along with Margaret's explanation and picked up from her. "This is Judge Seth Wyandotte from the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. He's going to administer the Oath of Office to you as soon as you're ready." She held up a slightly ragged softcover Study Bible that had obviously been taken from somebody's office collection.
Roger was pretty sure there was no way he was ever going to be ready for this, but now was absolutely not the place or time to say so. Instead, he placed his hand on the Bible and nodded to the judge, who read the oath of office off a slightly crumpled sheet of white paper. Roger repeated it back, and for once the room was otherwise entirely silent. No one applauded, but a silent sigh seemed to flow through the room as he finished. President Bartlet was gone, and they were in the middle of a disaster unlike anything the country had ever seen before, but there was a President in office now, and that was something.
"Sir," Donna said as soon as he'd finished, "there are reporters in the Press Room upstairs, they'd like to have a statement from you. The country needs to know that someone is in charge."
"The President can't give a statement in the Press Room right now!" Calvin immediately objected. "We're in total security lockdown here. We don't have a vector for that gas or any clue who the hell even attacked us! Even the White House may not be safe."
Donna and Margaret both lost a little more color at that, but Donna was insistent. "We can bring a reporter and camera crew down here then, have him make a televised announcement from the bunker. He has to speak, and it has to be now. It doesn't have to be great oratory, but the people need to know that somebody-" Her voice suddenly shook. "That somebody's still alive here."
"She's right," Roger said with a nod. "Who do I need for that?" he asked the two assistants.
"Carol Fitzpatrick is here, she's the senior assistant to the Press Secretary," said Margaret, "and I think Henry-"
"Henry went with," Donna whispered. "He was wrangling the press corps, it was a last minute thing. But Carol can talk you through it," she told Roger, her voice growing stronger. "There's a reporter in the press room, Danny Concannon. He's a... a friend of the administration, he's very good. He can help come up with questions you need to answer for the public."
"I don't know if Danny can do it," Margaret murmured, mostly to Donna. "CJ..."
"He'll do it," Donna said firmly. "He'll do it for CJ." Her eyes were wet, but her face was set with determination.
Margaret hesitated, then nodded agreement. "You'll need to declare a state of emergency," she reminded the new president. "The district is already locked down, but you'll make it official and ensure that federal aid can be delivered faster."
Roger nodded, the thought had already occurred to him in a vague sort of way. "Do we know anything about Congress?"
"Bonnie and Ginger are upstairs making calls," Donna told him. "It was a full house tonight, but I can think of a half-dozen Congressmen and a few Senators who almost certainly weren't there. It's going to take a few hours to know anything for sure, all the local circuits are jammed."
"Put whoever's available on that, get them making more calls faster," Roger instructed. "And get somebody watching the tapes, check people off a list if you have to."
"Sir," Donna murmured, looking ill at the idea.
"It might be faster for us to work with the federal agents on the scene," Margaret suggested. "I'm sure they're identifying... you know, identifying as they go. Between that and the calls, we should be able to figure out who wasn't there tonight."
Roger nodded to both of them. "I'm sorry," he said, then raised his voice to be heard. "I know this is hard. I know most people in this room lost good friends tonight. But we have a duty to them and to this country that they gave their lives for. We'll have time to mourn later, when we've done everything that has to be done to keep these United States safe and whole and free. And I'll be counting on every one of you. Understood?"
For some reason, Roger wasn't having any trouble commanding the room anymore. A chorus of soft "yessirs" and "understood" answered him as people returned to their tasks with great intensity. He turned back to the two assistants. "I'm about to have five tons of military brass descend on me with the force of an angry god," he murmured to them. "You two may be my only civilian advisors until I can name a cabinet. I'm going to need a lot from both of you. Can you do it?"
He watched as the two assistants looked at each other, two women who'd just lost most of the giant figures in their lives and half their coworkers in one horrible swoop. Margaret reached out and took Donna's hand, Donna squeezed back and nodded in response to some unspoken question. They both turned to face their new Commander in Chief. "Yes, sir."